


do not go gentle into that good night

by wajjs



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Batman is only mentioned - Freeform, Creepy, Gen, Supernatural Elements, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23700433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: The boy of yesterday goes south so the man of tomorrow can begin.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	do not go gentle into that good night

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this for primeemeraldheiress reverse prompathon on tumblr:
> 
> _10 past midnight:_ Jason didn't wake up after six months in his grave. It's been ten years.
> 
> I ended up editing that first drabble [(here's the tumblr post)](https://wajjs.tumblr.com/post/613130293769125888/reverse-promptathon-day-4) and adding more scenes to it so here, enjoy!

**_do not go gentle into that good night_ **

When he comes to, he doesn't have a sound presence of mind to notice if everything's the same or if existence is all different. All he knows is that his body itches, it itches so much, everywhere anywhere all the time. His skin is pink and raw and tender, it splits so easily, it tears apart like it isn't used to covering muscle, to lay and expand like a rubber band over the length of his body. 

When he moves his fingers, the skin around his knuckles cracks to reveal the tissue underneath binding itself together. When he closes his hands into fists, the points of tension rip apart until bone can be seen.

In rotten confines he tries to scream but sound never comes: airless, maggot full, no space for anything except dying and living dying and living dying and living until the next time he moves his spine doesn't break in half and the wood above him gives way to soil. Then, like swimming against the waves of a sea storm, he digs.

And digs.

And digs.

Till his lungs are taken over by wet air.

Till this time his screams alert the world of his return.

Here's the big difference: when he escapes in nothing but the tattered rags of what once was the finest suit, he is not found. He doesn't somehow end in a hospital. He doesn't repeat the same name over and over like it is the one true piece of his identity, the key to unlock the heart of everything. No beautiful woman takes him, there are no green waters to drown his mind.

When he escapes, he is not teetering the line between life and death. No, he's a new line altogether, something unknown and terrible, an unspeakable thing no one should witness. With each step he gives it's like the very ground is shaking with the screams of those who have unfinished business upon the earth yet are forever locked outside of this existence.

If he had his memories with him perhaps his steps would've taken him to a big old house full of societal prestige and the implications of being elite. Perhaps he would've sought out the shadows in the night of the dirty city, familiar and known like yesterday. Perhaps he would've sneaked his way into a dark cave, underground, lit by the light of monitors larger than everything else.

But under the chill of the snow he doesn't feel, he goes the other direction. The boy of yesterday goes south so the man of tomorrow can begin.

Satisfying his hunger for knowledge, he drinks in everything, every little change and every major one. In his tiny refuge, a motel room that's seen too many days, he counts the money he's stolen with an old ease he will never shake away. 

Here, as well, his very bones itch and he can't scratch them anymore because now his skin takes longer to stitch itself back together. The best next thing is pouring himself into hot water. Hot water until he's like he was when he first arose: red, pink and tender.

The small TV picks up a dubious quality signal. In the screen a blonde lady speaks with a sour face about a bat, two birds, a cat. He hums, spark ignited, his own name flashing before his eyes. And with it, everything, everything else.

At the end of all things, he's the one who walks back to the big fence, stays there, stares through it. The calendar marks ten years of the day he was forced to rot, three more of the day he came back. And his face is still tender, barely aged, and his organs still itch as well as his veins.

He thinks of letting them see him.

He thinks of the one he misses so much he has nightmares about his name and he tastes the unspilled sound against the back of his lips.

"Excuse me," someone says behind him, he had heard the bike approaching, yet he hadn't thought of moving. "Who are you?"

Inside his chest his heart doesn't speed up. It hasn't done that ever since he's been back up and roaming the roads.

"An old partner," he whispers, smiling, and steps aside, begins walking away. Now that he knows all that he knows, is there really a need to be here? 

A need to belong?

Inside an abandoned apartment, he exhales warm puffs of air between his cupped hands more out of habit than necessity. The chill, what would usually be a deadly thing, is now a small hindrance. Instead he worries more about what people see when he lets himself be  _ seen. _

Ranging from the worst to the odds, he sits with unusual stillness and goes through his mental catalogue of each expression those unfortunate who stumbled upon him had. Like they're looking upon something they shouldn't. Like he is something too strange and too cursed to witness. Like he is a vision of death herself. Like he is not there, a mental chant they must tell themselves, he is not there he is not there.

Without stiffness after sitting down for so long, he gets up and walks to the bathroom, stares at his reflection in the dirty, muddy mirror.

What he sees is what he looked like before he died but corrupted. Wrong, decaying and rotten. He looks like a dead child.

  
  


Dirty fingerprints all over the pages of the book just stolen from the bookshop, he devours the words like he doesn't devour food. His hunger, this time around, is different. It's more merciful when on the streets.

_ Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, _ he reads over and over, etches the words into his brain,

_ And learn, too late, they grieved on its own way, _

_ Do not go gentle into that good night. _

He turns the page and then - stops.

A shadow comes looming from the window.

The winter chill cracks the bathroom mirror.

And he stands.

And he runs.

But they catch him, they find him, they don't let go.

There are shadows by the door and shadows coming in.

The winter wind is not going away.

He should fight, he should fight since he would win.

Freak, they call him.

Freak, he is.

And free he goes.

And indeed he wins.

The street kids ask him his name. He invents himself one.  _ Thomas, _ he says, accepts his part in the small pack, helps keep them all alive.

One night history starts all over again. With Batman's car parked in the Alley. With him and a tire iron in his hands.

The call is strong. The need to be found again.

Lily, a small little thing, steps out of the shadows trembling, cries out a little.

"I'm hungry," she tells him. "Thomas, I'm hungry."

Two tires and they run.

Batman will think he's being chased by a ghost.

He dreams of stillness. Remembers the stillness of the soil, the stillness of being inside. He thinks it's ironic a belief in miracles grows at the time of funerals. When he visits his grave, it is unperturbed.

He thinks  _ I have worked. Who will write my story? _

The glory in sneakers, the empty vase. (Who knows if he began wondering: why do I live?)

(I live not to lose.)

At the end of winter, it's not Batman who finds him. It's a beautiful girl with her hair all red, alive eyes and a wheelchair.

He's in clothes that once belonged to somebody who took them from someone else. He's got plastic bags wrapped around his feet inside his sneakers. There is dirt on his face and pure awareness in his eyes. 

"Jason?," she asks and there is no denying.

Here comes the end of his running days.

**Author's Note:**

> the poem Jason reads and that is also the title of this fic is _Do not go gentle into that good night_ , written by Dylan Thomas (Jason uses his name as alias, but it also matches with the name Thomas Wayne).


End file.
